What we do

At the Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, we are training a generation of clinicians and researchers to study the impact that hearing loss in older adults has on public health and to develop and implement public health strategies and solutions for hearing loss.

Ensuring that older adults can effectively hear and engage with the people and world around them is key to optimizing health and well-being. The Cochlear Center is dedicated to recruiting and training a generation of researchers, clinicians and public health experts who can study the impact that hearing loss has on public health, develop and test strategies to address hearing loss and help implement effective policies for hearing loss at the local, national and global levels.

The Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health will work to effectively optimize the health and function of an aging society and become the premier global resource for ground-breaking research and training on hearing loss and public health.

Hearing Matters

Hearing loss isn’t just an inconvenience that comes with getting older—it’s a critical public health issue that is now the focus of national and international initiatives coming from the National Academies, the White House and the World Health Organization. This global attention to hearing loss is the result of our growing understanding of the impact that hearing loss (present in nearly two-thirds of older adults) can have on the risk of dementia, cognitive decline, greater health care costs and other adverse outcomes. Implementing strategies to treat hearing loss, which are vastly underutilized around the world, could help reduce the risk of these outcomes and optimize the health of older adults.

Leading the way in public health hearing loss research

The Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health is the only global research institution focused exclusively on issues related to hearing loss and public health in older adults. Our researchers are interested in understanding the impact of hearing loss on public health, crafting and testing solutions and supporting and working to advance medical, public health and governmental understanding of these issues all around the world